Full Description
Perfect Italian Diction for Singers is an authoritative guide for singing the most beautiful and expressive Italian. This book is the culmination of decades of experience and insights by two noted Italian and American pedagogues and vocal coaches as they systematically home in on essential features of the most beautiful Italian, the main issues and pitfalls of non-Italian singers, and steps and tools to overcome them.
Timothy Cheek and Anna Toccafondi provide a step-by-step guide for singing flawlessly in this language, and, in addition to delving to the heart of Italian sounds and inflection, they present controversies, misconceptions, and various approaches—often conflicting—that have arisen throughout the last century for approaching Italian diction. Chapters also address:
Italian style and legato
Best use of supplemental resources and dictionaries
Recitative with suggested, short Mozart excerpts
Working with text
Singing diphthongs, triphthongs, and hiatus
Also included are a plethora of audio and video examples and exercises (over seventy QR codes), written exercises for group or self-study, and self-assessment summaries at the ends of chapters. Careful study of this book will help to lay a solid foundation for communicating in beautiful lyric Italian.
Contents
Recorded Examples and Exercises
Preface
1. The Basis for the Most Beautiful and Correct Lyric Italian Diction
2. The Seven Italian Vowel Sounds
3. The Essentials of Stress and Length
4. The Pronunciation of e and o
5. The Italian Consonants
6. Double Consonants and Phrasal Doublings
7. Legato
8. Mastering Glides, Hiatus, Diphthongs, and Triphthongs
9. Italian Style
10. Working with Text
11. Best Use of Supplemental Resources
12. Recitative
Appendix A. Verb Endings
Appendix B. Essential Grammar
Selected References
Index
About the Authors
